1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to forest management and, in particular, to forest management operations. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for performing forest management operations.
2. Background
Forestry management is a branch of forestry that includes many different aspects. These aspects may include environmental, economic, administrative, legal, and social aspects of managing a forest. Forestry management may consist of various techniques such as timber extraction, planting trees, replanting trees, cutting roads and pathways through forests, preventing fires in a forest, maintaining the health of the forest, and other suitable activities.
When performing these and other operations with respect to forest management, collecting information about the forest may be desired. For example, collecting information about the forest provides an ability to analyze the state of the forest as well as identify operations that may be performed.
The tools used to generate information for assessing the state of a forest may include, for example, without limitation, a clinometer, a data recorder, an increment borer, a wedge prism, a diameter tape, a global positioning system device, a tally meter, a laptop computer, and other suitable tools. These tools are used by forestry management personnel to perform various operations such as estimating numbers of trees present in an area, identifying the health of trees, identifying the age of trees, identifying tree spacing, identifying composition of soil samples, and other suitable operations.
With this information, an analysis of the information may be made to identify a state of the forest. This state of the forest may be a forest inventory. This forest inventory may provide results such as the value of the timber, expected cash flows from the timber, the amount of timber land existing, impacts of recreational use, risks of fire, improvements to increase the growth and value of the forest, the time period in which timber should be harvested, and other suitable results.
Currently, the process for collecting information for assessing the state of a forest is very time-consuming and complex. For example, collecting information may require tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of sensor readings or observations made by forest management personnel for a particular location in the forest. With additional locations, even more information is collected. Moreover, collecting this information within desired time periods and as frequently as desired increases the time and effort needed.
Further, current processes also often rely on sampling when collecting information. Sampling may be performed in selected locations instead of from the entire forest. This type of information collection may be used when obtaining information over the whole forest and is more time-consuming than desired. Further, when sampling, errors may occur due to a lack of adequate information collection and analysis.
The collection of information is performed by forest management personnel using tools that often may require interpretation by the forest management personnel. As a result, different human operators may make different interpretations while making measurements. The lack of consistency of interpretations may lead to undesired results.
For example, two different people may decide that different types of samplings should be used based on two different measurements of tree spacing. As another example, when using a clinometer, measurement of the height of a tree using two different clinometers may produce different results. These differences may provide results that may not be as accurate as desired.
Further, the information may be inconsistent depending on the ability of forest management personnel to reach different portions of the forest. For example, access to certain locations within the forest may be infeasible for forestry management personnel. In these inaccessible regions, the information may be unavailable and as a result the state of the forest may not be identified as accurately as desired.
Additionally, the availability of forest management personnel to collect information may not be as great as desired in order to obtain a desired amount of information for performing an analysis. Additionally, this analysis may not be performed with a desired level of accuracy or with the use of as up-to-date information as desired.
As a result, collecting information needed to analyze the state of the forest is often much more complex and difficult than desired. With the number of pieces of information needed and the frequency at which the information is needed, the amount of forest management personnel needed to obtain this information may be infeasible due to the amount of personnel available or the costs associated with use of these personnel. Further, with the use of human operators to make measurements and observations, the information collected may not be as uniform or as accurate as desired.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues.